Apologies done right

This blog has previously discussed apologies if for no other reason then because they are an extremely fascinating genre. As mentioned here (with further references; in particular to the best genre blog ever to exist) a true apology has four features.

• sincere, genuine
• no "but"s (as in, "I'm sorry, but here's my excuse")
• specific about your own actions
• commitment not to repeat the offending action

Simple as that may sound, it often fails. Probably, but I am speculating, because the first point, which is on the surface of it the most flimsy of the four, gets in the way of the other three. It is very hard to look like you assume blame unconditionally if you don't mean it; and it is equally hard to commit to not repeating an offense if you're actually not convinced you've done something wrong. However, sometimes, just sometimes, it's done right. Here is an example of what to do if you've put your foot in it (or, as we'd say in Danish, "stepped in the spinach planting" ("trådt i spinatbeddet")).

Friday March 12th, 2021, an MBA education at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU)—usually the epitome of respectability—published an advertisement article in order to convince private enterprises that they needed the expertise of the MBA-education to handle Metoo properly. Now, I have no idea how the text came about but it managed to make female employees—not sexual harassment against them—into the Metroo-problem they would teach their prospective MBA-students how to handle. Personally, I'd rather take sensitivity classes from a rhinoceros. My wife stumbled upon it and pushed it into my hands. So, trying to ally up a bit, I called out the SDU in a Danish-language thread on twitter.

    Now, I don't carry a lot of weight on Danish twitter, but this one had the potential to do some damage anyway, if the ball started rolling. The twitter account doesn't need to be that heavy for the impact to be. It was picked up quickly, and it could have grown into a major crisis at a considerable speed. However, someone at SDU had a watchful eye out (also, I did tag them like three or four times in the thread), and it was a question of mere hours before this reply appeared:

It translates like this:

Dear everyone. We support #Metoo. The advertisement was not an expression of SDU's values or politics. It is discriminatory. We hereby offer an unconditional apology. We are going to give the internal processes at @SAMF_SDU (The faculty of Social Sciences. SA) a serious quality check. Thank you for reacting to the advertisement.

The Dean of the Faculty was equally quick. Here's his reply. Shorter, but no less to the point.

Translation:

Sometimes you just have to surrender unconditionally*. SORRY, SORRY SORRY. There's really not much more to say. We must do a lot better...

Much as I did not admire the original advertisement, I do admire this reaction. The reply from the central, and more formal, account is centralized and quite formal. It speaks on behalf of the university and it apologizes with a description of how the advertisement violated the central values of the university. Knowing how heavy institutions universities are, I'd suggest this reply has taken some work to establish and ensuring the necessary approval. It performs every point of the apology right. It is sincere and devoid of states the transgression with clarity "it was discriminatory", and it promises systemic improvement on the relevant point as would be expected of the systemic level of a university as represented by the official twitter-account of the university.

The Dean is the leader directly responsible for the advertisement, even if chances are he only ever read the advertisement after seeing the criticism. Therefore, the statement has to be more personal to do the work involved. And lo and behold, it IS more personal. You can almost taste the abject exasperation at the situation. The specificity is a little less defined than in the more official tweet, but the double emphasis (triple word + upper case) plus the declaration of unconditional surrender more than makes up for it. Moreover, there's still not a trace of an "if" or a "but", and the promise of improvement is very strong and once again with a double marker: the statement itself, and the three "to be continued" full-stops at the end of the tweet.

Knowing a bit about how deans work, I know what kind of trouble I would have been in during my days as middle management at the University of Copenhagen if my actions had forced the dean into making such a statement publicly. In this situation that knowledge, I admit it, affords me a certain grim satisfaction.

The apology is a rich, and somehow magical, genre. I sometimes say that it can transform transgression to community. In the case of institutional apologies like those in question they do additional work. The first is damage control. By absolutely refusing to defend the statement, the university and the faculty secures that the fallout is kept at a minimum and that responsibility for the statement is limited to the institution which made it in the first place.

    Moreover, as many other institutional crises, this one offers a chance for an improved practice, but only if it is taken seriously. In heavy institutions like universities you often only learn through blunderers. You find yourself having put your foot in it, and this gets you asking what "it" is. So, the commitment to not repeat the offending action is also an opportunity to improve on an existing institutional practice. Thus, stupid as the original action was, the University of Southern Denmark may actually find itself a better institution for it. Uptake, as always, is almost everything.

* The Danish reads "lægge sig fuldstændig fladt ned" which literally translates as "lie down completely flat." It's an idiom, but its literal meaning adds to the sense of surrender in the expression.